2011-12 TV wrap-up and 2012-13 preview: It mostly all sucks, and CBS still tries its best to keep viewers from viewing "The Good Wife"

Are The Good Wife's Alicia (Julianna Margulies) and Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) trying to figure out how to get their overseers at CBS to stop working so hard to prevent fans of the network's best show -- not to mention people who would be grabbed by it if they got the hang of it -- from watching?

by Ken

The things I do for you, dear readers. Today I actually watched the last 25 minutes or so of the dreadful Jets-Steelers game, just for the purpose of seeing when exactly the telecast would end and CBS's pushed-back Sunday-night schedule would begin.

As you surely know already, the NFL has pushed its "late"-game start time back from 4:15pm ET to 4:25pm, and CBS has responded by pushing its Sunday-night schedule back from 7 to 7:30 ET. (Fox, the other network affected by NFL late-game starts, has been starting its Sunday-night schedule at 7:30 for some time.)

So tonight I endured that unendurable stretch of Jets-Steelers to confirm just what I suspected: that the 10-minute pushback is totally useless for my purposes. Even in combination with the elimination of any kind of postgame coverage -- except for postgame commercials -- CBS couldn't get 60 Minutes on the air till 7:37.

Now I don't give a damn about the football games. Can people still be watching these dreadful spectacles? Are fans really not noticing that the drawn-out games have become increasingly unendurable? And I'm not blaming the commercial-time inflation. Sure, this is a known (and knowing) drain on viewers' patience, but the generally unspoken reality is that what happens between the commercials has become even more unwatchable. And for me this is just as true of the supposed nail-biters as of a dog like today's Jets-Steelers mess. The only real question in any game seems to me the collective amount by which the lives of the players on the field, not to mention the quality of those lives, has been shortened by the day's orgy of physical punishment. And that won't be known till years and decades afterward, at which point hardly any viewers will be paying attention.

For that matter, I don't give a damn about 60 Minutes either. I can't believe people are still watching that either. A broadcast that once prided itself on punching holes in the status quo has become one of its most ardent defenders. Can anyone care about what's left?

What I do care about is the pushback of the rest of the CBS Sunday-night schedule. And the one thing I care about, as we count down to the start of the fall TV season, is being able to catch the start of The Good Wife, which is close to the only thing on CBS I care about. (Okay, I'm a big fan of The Big Bang Theory, and have managed to continue watching How I Met Your Mother even as it has increasingly run out of steam. And I got through a season of Two Broke Girls, despite the high annoyance level of most of the episodes.)

So let's recap. The NFL think it has solved its late-game start-time problem: that viewers of the early games frequently get their game lopped off because contractually local stations have to switch to the late games of double-headers when they start. Now if they can't get those early games over by 4:25 . . . well, I won't finish that thought. I'm not entirely persuaded that they can. But again, that's not the game-end time which concerns me.

I have a feeling that the CBS programming people are frustrated by the ratings of The Good Wife, feeling that more viewers should care about it. I'm not talkikng about tricking people into watching the show; I'm talking about making sure that all the viewers who would enjoy the show if they got a feel for what it's doing ever find out what' it's doing. But does no one a the network grasp the punishment inflicted on the show by placing it on the Sunday-night schedule? You have to really, really care about the show to put up with what you have to put up with just to be able to watch the show, whether in real time or via DVR.

In the wake of the football-pushback story, I found a blogger who like me was mostly concerned about the impact on DVR-ability of The Good Wife. She (I think it was a she; I couldn't refind the post) pointed out that pushing The Good Wife into a 9:30-to-10:30 slot would complicate the lives of many viewers suffering a DVR jam-up on Sunday nights, since it will make it impossible for most DVR owners to record more than one other show in the 9pm slot.

This struck me as in interesting point. What with NPR's Masterpiece and assorted cable offerings that tend to be squeezed into Sunday nights, there really is a DVR jam-up. But there are ways around that, making use of cable repeats and On Demand. However, when the CBS schedule is pushed back 7 minutes, the only solution I've found to avoid missing the last 7 minutes of The Good Wife is to manually schedule a 90-minute recording from 9:30 to 11.

In other words, I'm exactly where I've been since The Good Wife was moved to Sunday night. The powers-that-be are doing everything in their power to keep me from watching, but I'll be damned if I let them stop me!


MY 2011-12 WRAP-UP AND 2012 FALL PREVIEW

I've written hardly anything about the season past because there didn't seem to me much to write about. And sorry, but I haven't been able to force myself to study the fall schedules as I know I should have. My strategy of recent seasons has been to trust blindly that the new shows can't all be as dreadful as they sound. So once again I'll trust that word of mouth will reach me in time to clue me in if I've been missing anything. If you've got any tips, I'm listening.

I can say that I'm looking forward to the new season of HBO's Boardwalk Empire, which begins tonight. Otherwise, even my cable-show interest has been waning. Oh, on AMC I thought the new Mad Men season was fine and the new Breaking Bad half-season ditto. Better still, Lifetime's Army Wives has an outstanding season, but they seemed to be saying the promos that the final episode of the season was the final episode -- though I can't find any actual announcement to that effect, and the season certainly ended with a heckuva cliffhanger.

What alarmed me was the extend to which I found myself thinking that I didn't really need to watch new episodes of onetime USA Network standards like Burn Notice and Royal Pains and Covert Affairs and Suits and even, perhaps most surprisingly, White Collar. At TNT there's still some life in Rizzoli and Isles, based entirely on the strength of the cast and the interest of the characters, and unfortunately less and less on the quality of the writing. I'm relieved that The Closer has been put out of my misery. (The recycling into Major Crimes is a mixed blessing. It's a relief not to have to endure all that awful stuff Kyra Sedgwick has been doing, but without her, does anyone want to keep watching that bunch?)

I don't know, maybe I'm just old and grumpy. The one bright side I can see is that maybe my Sunday nights won't be so jammed up and I'll have an easier time catching The Good Wife.

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You'd never guess from its present state of decay that "Psych" was once such a clever and endearing show

The evidence suggests that Shawn and Gus are beyond saving.

"Let me apologize for Gus's behavior. It's juvenile and not very likable."

-- Shawn (James Roday), about best his friend, Gus (Dulé Hill),
in the Psych episode "Shawn and the Real Girl"

by Ken

I'm sorry to have to say that what "psychic detective" Shawn Spencer says about his childhood best friend, Burton "Gus" Guster, has become lamentably true. However, it passes over the disturbing reality that Shawn's behavior" has regressed from juvenile to infantile, and he has leapfrogged from "not very likable" to positively loathsome.

This weekend I finally caught up on the four new Psych episodes piled up on my DVR. (Officially, I see, they're known to USA Network as Episodes 10-13 of Season 6, continuing from October-December.) Whatever force kept me from watching any of these episodes sooner turns out to have known whereof it was forcing. I think it's no exaggeration to say that these episodes were uniformly appallingly awful. It was all the more discouraging that the "super-sized" first of them, "Indiana Shawn and the Temple of the Kinda Crappy, Rusty Old Dagger," was written and directed by series creator Steve Franks, which would seem to certify that this is where he thinks the show is these days.

In fact, I was all set to delete the show from my DVR's automatic-recording list when I noticed online that the next new episode, coming up Wednesday, focuses on Kurt Fuller's Woody the coroner, whose sleazy crassness (or is it crass sleaziness? I think it works either way) provides me my only moments of pleasure these days.

It matters quite a lot that Shawn and Gus have become so utterly unlikable, because the charm of Psych has always been the likability of its characters -- that and the central conceit that it's easier for Shawn, who grew up being trained in fastidious forensic observation by his former-police-lieutenant father, Henry Spencer (Corbin Bernsen, who in the earlier seasons was simply sublime, laying the groundwork, I wrote here, for a whole new career as a character actor), to get people to believe that he's psychic than that he is so compulsively observant and so skilled at deducing dazzling deductions from his observations.

Of course there was always a risk in building a show around a boy who's too old to continue being a boy, and is getting older year by year. Even more dangerously the show's creative team allowed Shawn to win the romantic interest of Santa Barbara Det. Juliet O'Hara (Maggie Lawson). The more Shawn regresses instead of advancing, the more bewildering, even alarming, it is that someone as smart and competent and attractive as Jules could allow herself even to contemplate a relationship with him.

The other quote I scribbled down during my weekend Psych-watching was bit of dialogue involving Jules's crook-father, Frank O'Hara -- a return appearance by William Shatner in the second new episode, "Heeeeere's Lassie." Rather than return Shawn's phone call, Frank has simply shown up in Santa Barbara.

SHAWN: I left you that message a week ago. Where were you?
FRANK: Tanzania.
GUS: You climbed Kilimanjaro?
SHAWN: Gus, don't make up words. What were you doing in Australia, Frank?

As The Simpsons' Nelson would say, "Har har." You get it? Shawn doesn't know what Kilimanjaro is! Har har! Plus he chastises Gus for making stuff up! Har har! Plus, he thinks this place Frank has announced is in Australia! Har har! Oh, that Shawn, what a goof!

Um, no. Even if any of it was believable, it wouldn't be amusing, or much of anything else. Yet what was most alarming was that there was, as far as I could tell (but then, I acknowledge that by then I wasn't watching exactly carefully), no reason for Frank O'Hara to have turned up, except the fact that Shawn had indeed left him a message when he was contemplating proposing to Jules. But his appearance had nothing to do with this show, and worse still, wasn't interesting, or humorous, or anything else I could determine. "Gratuitous" was the word that leapt to mind. I guess it was an opportunity to slip pop-culture iconette Shatner into the guest cast, and offer regular viewers a little "in" joke (minus the joke part).

About the only remaining pleasure of Psych is Kurt Fuller's wacky-sleazy Woody the coroner. It's something, but not much.

I don't know anything about the show's ratings, and I guess I would be still more alarmed to learn that any appreciable number of viewers are still tuning in. (Why?) Unlike USA's In Plain Sight, which is formally announced as being in its final season, nobody involved with Psych seems to have summoned the resoluteness to pull the plug on this ghastly ghost of its former clever, vital self.

I don't know if it qualifies as irony, or just a fact of life, but so far the new episodes of In Plain Sight (which, I noticed, far from leaving languishing on the DVR, I pounced on) have been terrific -- not only finding serviceable new plot lines (is the Psych creative team even trying?) but advancing the lives of its equally terrific set of characters in believable and interesting ways.

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This "In Plain Sight" performance highlighted one difference between cable and broadcast network drama

In the episode "Second Crime Around," Mary had to deal with her least favorite kind of witness, a con man -- meet Ronnie McIntire (Maury Sterling).

by Ken

Phew! Sorry, folks, I tried to find a little clip, like even a preview, to show you an actor new to me, Maury Sterling, as con man Ronnie McIntire on Episode 5, "Second Crime Around," of the current season of USA's In Plain Sight, but I just couldn't find it. Hey, I had a tough enough time finding the names of the character and the actor! (You'd think that would be the absolutely most basic information you could find on a website, or at any rate I would, but uh-uh. Is the moronic crap you find on most TV-show websites really what fans want to find there? (Don't answer that. I don't want to know.)

Anyway, the reason I hoped to show you a bit of Maury Sterling as con man Ronnie is that his performance struck me as a delicious example of what the good cable drama shows -- and, come to think of it, even some of the cable comedies -- are doing so much better these days than most network shows: casting really good actors and allowing them, maybe even encouraging them (but I'll settle for allowing) to really make their characters vivid and believable. A crucial part of the premise of this episode is that there's nothing Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) hates worse than a con man, of which the Witness Protection Program unfortunately absorbs its scoundrel-y share. And the writers created a really loathsome specimen, a man who utterly without remorse, in fact with a great deal of gusto (this is a man who loves his "work"), scams old folks out of their life's savings.

None of which would have counted for much if the producers hadn't found an actor to really fill the role. Enter Maury. He gave us, without sentimentality or apology (and certainly without a mitigation) a con man who really loves his "work" -- an utterly vile and unreservedly loathsome being brought vividly to life without softening or caricature. This is something it seems to me you just don't see so much on the big-budget broadcast-network dramas, where the obsession with Q-ratings and bland prettiness tends to reduce characters like Ronnie to labels. Which we accept, by and large, because we're used to the game. Oh yes, that one is The Villain, boo! Yawn.

It's when you see performances like Maury's -- or, for that matter, like everyone in the cast of AMC's Mad Men or Breaking Bad that you realize how different things can be when the producers and writers have more freedom to just concentrate on the work, not satisfying the network suits. I assume that the cable networks have suits too. They don't seem to have quite the clout of their broadcast-network counterparts. At least not yet!

And this month and next a whole slew of my favorite cable dramas are having season premieres -- we're definitely past the era when summer TV meant the doldrums.

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The "superseded" scripts of USA's "In Plain Sight" are more interesting than most shows' final ones

In last week's episode of In Plain Sight, "Crazy Like a Witness," Bradley Whitford played a black-ops-type specialist who goes into Witness Protection with his son and is persuaded that his old company is out to get him. Episode 3 of Season 4 airs tonight at 10pm ET on USA Network, with the usual all-week repeats.

by Ken

Two episodes into the new season (with the third up tonight), it has been great having USA Network's In Plain Sight back. The creative team has by now established the personal and professional lives of Witness Protection marshal Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) so solidly that they have a wide range of opportunities to play with. In an ingenious turnaround from previous seasons, Mary has to grapple with the possibility that her alcoholic screw-up mother (Lesley Ann Warren) and her perennial blond bombshell screw-up sister Brandi (Nichole Hiltz) may actually have straightened their lives out, and maybe she can't keep blaming the mess of her own personal life on always having to deal with theirs.

Meanwhile at work Mary remains Mary. In the season-opening episode, as her boss, Stan (Paul Ben-Victor), the regional WITSEC director, interviewed candidates for a new deputy director, the eventual winning candidate got her foot in the door by declaring herself up to the job of dealing with "the Mary Shannon problem." And the relationship between Mary and her fellow marshal Marshall is so well laid out that we know its boundaries, which means that we can also be surprised when they're breached.

BUT THAT WASN'T WHAT I WANTED
TO TALK ABOUT, EXACTLY

As the show is normally structured, near the start and at the end of each episode there is an establishing and then a summing up of Mary and the Albuquerque WITSEC office's relationship with the the episode's witness, done in part with voiceover narration by Mary. What anyone who has used the show's closed captions discovers is that for these opening and closing voiceovers, the actual voiceover and the CCs come from fundamentally different versions of the script.

We're not talking about the usual, expectable deviations between CCs and actual dialogue. We're not even talking about one version being a rewrite of the other. (Presumably the version in the CCs would represent an earlier script stage, since the version that's broadcast is, after all, the version that's broadcast.) We're talking about different scripts.

By way of demonstration, I made my best effort to transcribe both versions from last week's episode, the second of Season 4, "Crazy Like a Witness." By way of background:

* Bradley Whitford plays an ex-Army dark-ops "fixer" type who had been working his "magic" for a Blackwater-type firm, Genesis, until he turned whistleblower over corrupt dealings by the company and its omniscient chief -- a typically absorbing performance by that wonderful character actor John de Lancie. At this point Adam's wife is killed in a hit-and-run, and as Adam and his high-school-age son go into Witness Protection, Adam's conviction that his old boss had her hit, and that his son is now in danger, comes to seem pathological to the people dealing with him, with the notable exception of Marshall.

* At the same time Mary is dealing with the indications that her seemingly hopeless sister Brandi really has straightened herself out, and really will marry the incredibly decent, not to mention prosperous, guy (Joshua Malina) who seems genuinely crazy about her.

Now I'm not going to make any attempt to key the voiceovers to the action unfolding on-screen. You have the general idea of the setup, so here is --

THE EPISODE-ESTABLISHING (EARLY-SHOW) VOICEOVER

ACTUALLY BROADCAST VOICEOVER

MARY: For all five years of high school, Brandi could never get off the phone. It didn't matter which guy, it was always the same. "You hang up." "No, you hang up." It took all I had not to rip the phone out of the wall. I never got that -- the unquenchable thirst for hanging up.

In my experience, holding out for closure does nothing but prolong the pain. The Stones got it right. Lance the boil, rip off the Band-Aid, and get on with it.

CLOSED-CAPTION VERSION

MARY: When relationships break apart, we naturally look to clean up the broken pieces, tie up loose ends, leave no emotion unexpressed.

For a person entering Witness Protection, this need for closure seems prerequisite to starting life anew.

In my experience, seeking closure only prolongs the pain. The Stones got it right. Lance the boil, rip off the Band-Aid, and get on with it.

THE EPISODE-SUMMING-UP (END-OF-SHOW) VOICEOVER

By the end of the show, nearly everything that can go wrong has gone wrong, except that neither Adam nor his son has been injured, and since they have ceased to become a threat to Genesis, their lives no longer appear to be in danger.

ACTUALLY BROADCAST VOICEOVER

MARY: [PART 1] One of my earliest memories was of a beachfront and a flagpole, and of lightning flashes headed for the shore. As grownups ran around, frantic, gathering beach towels, flip-flops, and five-year-olds, one kid in particular went racing toward the storm.

[PART 2] I watched that five-year-old at the beachfront clinging wide-eyed to the flagpole as pretty bolts of lightning lit the sky. Then his mom ran out -- or a lifeguard, or an aunt -- and pulled him down to ground [???], to live another day.

[PART 3] As with most things, hanging onto a flagpole is, in the end, a matter of balance a [???] to keep you steady while you stay alert for lightning, of the storms across the sea.

CLOSED-CAPTION VERSION

MARY: [PART 1] Day after day we struggle to get things right, desperate to sidestep the mistakes of the past. We rearrange our lives against the unforeseen, arming ourselves against what we cannot know.

[PART 2] You see it on the news every night. The tornado blowing off the plain, tectonic under ["one's feet"? -- can't read my writing], a bridge in the middle, scattered debris and kindling where a home used to be.

[PART 3] A wise man once said, "With one foot in yesterday and another in tomorrow, all we do is piss on today." Instead of grasping at straws, or grains of sand, we're better off throwing up our hands and living in the here and the now.

NOW DO YOU GET WHAT I'M SAYING?

As you can see, the "actually broadcast" version isn't a revise, or even a rewrite, of the version contained in the CCs. They aren't even necessarily going for the same point(s).

They're so different that it occurred to me belatedly that there might be some online chatter on the subject, and sure enough I found a thread on exactly this subject, from May 2010, in which a number of posters make exactly the points I've made above.

And wouldn't you know, they're sneeringly dismissed by a jerkwad who flaunts his self-professed inside knowledge of the closed-captioning process. The idea that the captioners could be working from a different script, he tells them patronizingly, is simply impossible, because that's not how the captioning process is done. It's done by transcription; the captioners never so much as see a script, and therefore all they can be talking about is minor transcription errors. Like, presumably the minor deviations in the parallel versions above.

Closed captions are often truncated to reflect what can be read in roughly the same amount of time as the spoken dialogue that's captioned. They have nothing to do with script changes; STTR's do most captioning.

What you're seeing is quite commonplace on television shows. The WGBH Foundation did most captioning at one point, but there are a number of groups now. Complaints should be directed to the FCC, although I'm not sure accuracy of captioning is all that high on their agenda.

You assume I don't use captions, or know the difference between truncation and alteration. I can't account for what you see on IPS, nor is this an argument I care to have. I just know how CC is done, and that it is done using STTR's who never see actual scripts. You've pronounced me wrong, so there's nothing more I can contribute.

I wouldn't call it an argument, just differing views. I have professional knowledge of how closed captioning works, and trust me, the captioners never see the scripts. As fun as it is to think the differences reflect changes made by the writers, they don't. Moreover, captioning is done in post-production, long after the final changes to the script are made, and the episode filmed.

It doesn't matter how often Jerkwad (not his/her actual screen name) is corrected, with actual examples presented. He has "professional knowledge of how closed captioning works." The only tiny problem is that, at least as regards the question raised regarding In Plain Sight, every single word he writes is 100 percent wrong.

As he would know if he simply listened to what he's being told. But I guess people with "professional knowledge" don't have to pay attention to reality.

BY THE WAY, ONE POSTER ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTES

In fact, cerulean's was the very first response to the original query:

In my experience, that is very common. The script changes after the closed captioning is recorded is my guess. They fixed it for the dvds of In Plain Sight, at least for the first two seasons. The X-Files was notorious for this practice.

I usually watch the closed captions to find these discrepancies, which I find interesting, as they give insight into script changes, but I am a freak. However, I agree that the captions should be adjusted to reflect the actual dialogue (although I have found most of the discrepancies to be in the narration in the case of In Plain Sight).

I also find it interesting to note that the closed captioning often edits profanity, when the spoken dialogue does not.

Maybe somebody has come up with an answer since May 2010, but then, here we are with a new season, and the same thing is still happening. Personally, I don't mind. I wish I understood what's going on, but like cerulean I find myself fascinated being able to see such different script versions. Again, it's hard to avoid the assumption that the CC version represents an earlier stage, simply because you'd have to assume the "actually broadcast" version is the "final" one. But I'm fascinated by this glimpse of a writing process that (episode after episode) includes such interestingly different versions. The rejected, or perhaps we should say superseded, versions are more interesting than the writing we find on an awful lot of shows.

As for our friend Jerkwad, well, he does indeed appear to be a professional at that.


UPDATE: NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL ACTION

I got home late and just finished watching tonight's In Plain Sight episode, "Love in the Time of Colorado" (was that a humdinger of an episode?), and man, my post goes up at 9pm ET making a federal case of this dual-script business, and an hour later USA sends out the new episode with the right CCs for the episode as aired! Okay, in the wrap-up scene the CCs were mis-synched, but look how little time they had to shape this episode up.

Now that I know I have this power, maybe next I'll go after all that mind-numbingly crappy music on Tremé. True, if HBO took all that stuff out, each episode would shrink to about eight minutes, but would that necessarily be a terrible thing? They could devote the rest of the hour to previews of upcoming HBO vampire-zombie-Mormon shows.

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USA's "Fairly Legal" is off to a strong start. Plus: David Brent meets Michael Scott

This promo sets out the basic premise of USA's new series Fairly Legal, about Kate Reed, a lawyer turned mediator who is surrounded by lawyers: the stepmother she hates (who has taken over direction of their law firm from Kate's just-deceased father), her brother, and her ex-husband, an assistant district attorney. The show airs Thursdays at 10pm ET, following Royal Pains.

"I was an attorney for five years. I quit to become a mediator. You want to know why? In court, somebody wins, but there's always a loser, and it doesn't necessarily have to do with who's right and who's wrong."

-- Kate Reed (Sarah Shahi), in the pilot of USA's Fairly Legal

by Ken

I'm afraid the above promo clip and the various others USA Network has prepared, while informative up to a point and accurate enough as far as they go, do much the same thing I'm about to do: make Fairly Legal seem more schematic and stereotyped than it actually plays, at least in the two episodes aired so far. (The fact that the website clips come freighted with 30-second "sponsored messages" may be reason enough to avoid them.) The premiere considerably exceeded my expectations, and the second episode went a long way toward cementing the show's hold on me.

For one thing, the main plot of the episode presented a provocative situation: A man convicted of robbery and murder at 18 is cleared after 22 years in prison. Kate, the mediator, is engaged by Justin (Michael Trucco), the assistant district attorney to whom she was married, to mediate a settlement between the state and the wrongly incarcerated man, Steve, played terrifically by Paul Schulze, known to some of us as Nurse Jackie's extramarital boyfriend Eddie. It's clear to everyone that Steve deserves compensation; the question is how much?

To Justin, it's clearcut. He wants the lowest-cost settlement the DA's office can get away with while also sparing his office the embarrassment of taking a wrongful-prosecution case to court. Kate, however, is horrified to find out, during the settlement conference, that Steve is so empty, at least outwardly, that she can't even find out from him what he wants, and she can't in good conscience settle the case without knowing what his story is. Eventually she gets him to open up, a little anyway.

STEVE: I had this dream. For 22 years I had this dream. That thing kept me alive. That I was exonerated. I was out. And then it happened. I got my dream. Except now I don't know what I want because everything I want is in the past. And the past is dead.
KATE: Before you were arrested, did you have an idea of what you thought your life would be like?
STEVE [shrugs]: Yeah.
KATE: Did it change? [He shakes his head.] Tell me about it.
STEVE: It's always late. Nighttime. [Pause.] I come home from a job that I don't really hate to a family that I really love. My son . . . wants to grow up to be a pro baseball player. My daughter is someone who I tell every day she's the prettiest girl in the room. And she is. And I have a wife who puts up with me, maybe even who loves me. And, uh, it's never gonna happen. Now, how . . . how do you put a price on that?

The show got at least me to think about what it means to have 22 of your 40 years taken away from you. Maybe I'm susceptible because I really am preoccupied by the whole question of how we use and misuse our time on earth, a question that's highlighted by this instance of someone who had those years taken away from him through no fault of his own.

I also tend to respond well to shows that treat their characters with basic respect. It's not hard to understand, for example, why Kate thinks of her stepmother, Lauren (Virginia Williams), as a monster, but at the same time the show makes clear that she isn't. Similarly, ex-husband Justin, far from being the pretty-boy stuffed shirt one might have expected, really believes in his job as a prosecutor: upholding the justice system in order to protect society from bad guys despite the considerable difficulties and obstacles. Kate, meanwhile, prizes actual justice above the orderliness of the justice system. This obviously puts them at odds over Steve's case.

Okay, it's a TV show, so it's hardly surprising that Kate and Justin (who turns out, when we see him shirtless, to be stuffing quite a lot in his shirt) are wildly hot, but both Sarah Shahi and Michael Trucco have a lot more going for them than their considerable physical attractiveness. Sensibly, the writing doesn't shy away from their sexual sizzle, acknowledging the attraction between the characters, which actually is far from just physical, while finding ways to make it clear why they're ex-spouses. Can't live without 'em, can't live with 'em, the way it happens so often happens in real life.

As usual with USA dramatic series there's a strong supporting cast, including Baron Vaughn as Kate's assistant, Leo, and Ethan Embry as Kate's brother, Spencer. Presumably Gerald McRaney will be back as the hard-assed judge who takes badly to Kate's disrespect for the law. And I've barely touched on the issues arising from the death of Kate's and Spencer's father, which shows signs of becoming steadily more rather than less complicated.

Gosh, I know the way I write about Fairly Legal makes it sound frightfully tedious, which again is a shame, because the show, created and produced by Michael Sardo, seems headed in promising directions, and confident about where it's going.


GREAT MOMENTS IN TV HISTORY: ON THE OFFICE,
DAVID BRENT MEETS ALTER-EGO MICHAEL SCOTT


The opening scene of this week's episode of The Office

And an impromptu dialogue on the nature of comedy ensues. Left unanswered is the question of what the hell David is doing in Scranton. (Scranton???) He does seem eerily alert to even the humblest possible employment opportunities, though.

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Counterprogramming the SOTU

Okay, people, how desperate are you to dodge the SOTU? What if I told you that at 9pm ET, Food Network is offering an episode of the appalling Cupcake Wars which has to do with the L.A. Auto Show? Just think, cupcakes for the Auto Show! On the plus side, at 10pm USA Network has a new episode of White Collar.

by Ken

As I've mentioned a bunch of times, I don't generally watch political speeches, of either the campaign or "actual governance" variety. I especially don't watch Republican officeholders, because . . . well, look at what you get. I realized that during the Nixon and Reagan years, I would be jeopardizing the continued functional health of TVs I couldn't afford to replace. But then, it's not as if there's much to hope for with today's Dem officeholders, at least the kind who most often turn up on TV. In the case of the incumbent president, I watched hours' worth of his inauguration, swept up in that feeling that after the long Dark Ages of the Bush regime, despite the horrendous challenges facing the new president, there was now cause for hope.

And look how well that worked out.

My position on occasions like the SOTU address is that all too soon, indeed way too soon, I will forcibly learn everything I need to know about what was said. I gather from today's buzz that President Obama is actually not going to advocate Social Security cutbacks, not even the ones recommended by his very own Deficit Diddling Commission. I gather he's not even going to say that, since doing so would put a damper in the New Era of Bipartisanship he's apparently going to be announcing.

A QUICK NOTE ON BIPARTISANSHIP

How is it that still the drones in government and the infotainment noozemedia never point out that the 21st-century concept of bipartisanship is completely unilateral: It's the willingness to Allow the Enemy to Accept Our Position. Anytime a Republican yammers about bipartisanship, he or she means unreserved capitulation to every jot and tittle of the most extreme position advocated by any right-wing sociopath. (As a matter of fact, this appears also to be the president's understanding of bipartisanship as well, and he's still all for it. Does anyone wonder why I don't want to watch him announce the New Era of Bipartisanship?)

An online colleague pointed out just how crazy it is that we're actually celebrating the fact that a Democratic president reportedly won't advocate cutting back Social Security in his SOTU. Worse, as other colleagues point out, even beyond the fact that he apparently has no intention of staking this out as an administration position -- he's just going to duck the question for tonight, and we all know it's just a matter of time before his people come up with one of those famous "compromises" which concedes essentially everything to the Deficit Diddlers. It's just that for now his people seem to be daunted by the (hardly surprising) polling that shows Americans really don't want Social Security diddled with.

As yet another online colleague pointed out today, the president has conceded control of the agenda to Republicans. Of course, his Republicanized agenda will fail, because it's designed by its crackpot creators to fail -- only it's the president, not the Republicans, who'll be blamed. Thereby ushering in the new all-Republican-controlled 113th Congress (already all but certain given the terrifying number of Senate seats the Dems have to defend in 2012), very likely with a new Republican president, difficult as that is to imagine given the caliber of the humanoid specimens now considered available for the job. And then it'll be 2001 all over again, except now the U.S. economy has been permanently stratified between the One Percent Who Matter (and their hangers-on and enablers) and the rest of us.


COUNTERPROGRAMMING THE SOTU

Hey, if Justice Sammy "The Stump" Alito doesn't have to be there (isn't it some coincidence how he's got that speaking engagement in Hawaii which makes it impossible for him?), and it's looking likely that his fellow wacko-thug-justices will follow suit (are they going to be in Hawaii too?), why should we have to watch? The question, though, is: What are our alternatives?

* On HuffPost, Alan Grayson as posted "The Speech I'd Like to Hear." Reading that is bound to be a more edifying experience -- as long as you don't consider that this is a "speech" proffered by a one-term ex-congressman.

* At 9pm ET, Food Network has what I think is a new episode of Cupcake Wars, and then at 10pm Chopped. I kind of hate Cupcake Wars, but as between it and the SOTU . . .

* At 10pm ET, USA Network has a new episode of White Collar, which takes us back into the prehistory of the characters -- Mozzie with hair, Peter with a moustache, Neal not yet supercool. I realize this won't take care of the 9-10 hour, but it will save you from the danger of wonk-crackpot Paul "Roadmap" Ryan's Republican response, and goodness knows something's got to be Saving Us from Representative Ryan.

THEN THERE's MICHELE BACHMANN . . .

delivering her, er, Tea Party response to, the Republican Party response to the Republican-wannabe president, which -- as Greg Sargent has been chronicling -- CNN has jumped into the breach to televise, to the consternation, not just of us lefties (as Steve Benen points out, the chance that CNN would televise a liberal Democratic response to a Republican president's speech is less than zero), but to, er, mainstreamisher GOP right-wingers.

* In the new New York Review of Books, Robert Gottlieb has a moderately interesting piece about Houdini. It's not one of the pieces that's available free online to nonsubscribers, just a précis. But for $6 you can buy a one-week trial subscription. The question is, how desperate are you?

I don't mean to be smug about it, but as I pointed out last night, I've still got two repeat episodes of Breaking Bad sitting on my DVR (with the next pair set to air in late night tomorrow). Phew!

#

UPDATE: And Here's An Advance Of Obama's Full Speech, The Latest In Counterprogramming

Tonight I want to begin by congratulating the men and women of the 112th Congress, as well as your new Speaker, John Boehner. And as we mark this occasion, we are also mindful of the empty chair in this Chamber, and pray for the health of our colleague-– and our friend-– Gabby Giffords.

It’s no secret that those of us here tonight have had our differences over the last two years. The debates have been contentious; we have fought fiercely for our beliefs. And that’s a good thing. That’s what a robust democracy demands. That’s what helps set us apart as a nation.

But there’s a reason the tragedy in Tucson gave us pause. Amid all the noise and passions and rancor of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater-– something more consequential than party or political preference.

We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled.

That, too, is what sets us apart as a nation.

Now, by itself, this simple recognition won’t usher in a new era of cooperation. What comes of this moment is up to us. What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.

I believe we can. I believe we must. That’s what the people who sent us here expect of us. With their votes, they’ve determined that governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all-– for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.

At stake right now is not who wins the next election-– after all, we just had an election. At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else. It’s whether the hard work and industry of our people is rewarded. It’s whether we sustain the leadership that has made America not just a place on a map, but a light to the world.

We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.

But we have never measured progress by these yardsticks alone. We measure progress by the success of our people. By the jobs they can find and the quality of life those jobs offer. By the prospects of a small business owner who dreams of turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise. By the opportunities for a better life that we pass on to our children.

That’s the project the American people want us to work on. Together.

We did that in December. Thanks to the tax cuts we passed, Americans’ paychecks are a little bigger today. Every business can write off the full cost of the new investments they make this year. These steps, taken by Democrats and Republicans, will grow the economy and add to the more than one million private sector jobs created last year.

But we have more work to do. The steps we’ve taken over the last two years may have broken the back of this recession – but to win the future, we’ll need to take on challenges that have been decades in the making.

Many people watching tonight can probably remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown. You didn’t always need a degree, and your competition was pretty much limited to your neighbors. If you worked hard, chances are you’d have a job for life, with a decent paycheck, good benefits, and the occasional promotion. Maybe you’d even have the pride of seeing your kids work at the same company.

That world has changed. And for many, the change has been painful. I’ve seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories, and the vacant storefronts of once busy Main Streets. I’ve heard it in the frustrations of Americans who’ve seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear-– proud men and women who feel like the rules have been changed in the middle of the game.

They’re right. The rules have changed. In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business. Steel mills that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100. Today, just about any company can set up shop, hire workers, and sell their products wherever there’s an internet connection.

Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.

So yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn’t discourage us. It should challenge us. Remember-– for all the hits we’ve taken these last few years, for all the naysayers predicting our decline, America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world. No workers are more productive than ours. No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs. We are home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any other place on Earth.

What’s more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea-– the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny. That is why centuries of pioneers and immigrants have risked everything to come here. It’s why our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like “What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can’t just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, “The future is not a gift. It is an achievement.” Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age.

Now it’s our turn. We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit, and reform our government. That’s how our people will prosper. That’s how we’ll win the future. And tonight, I’d like to talk about how we get there.

The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation.

None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be, or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn’t know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution. What we can do – what America does better than anyone – is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It’s how we make a living.

Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That’s what planted the seeds for the Internet. That’s what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS.

Just think of all the good jobs-– from manufacturing to retail-– that have come from those breakthroughs.

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik¸ we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t there yet. NASA didn’t even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. In a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology-– an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.

Already, we are seeing the promise of renewable energy. Robert and Gary Allen are brothers who run a small Michigan roofing company. After September 11th, they volunteered their best roofers to help repair the Pentagon. But half of their factory went unused, and the recession hit them hard.

Today, with the help of a government loan, that empty space is being used to manufacture solar shingles that are being sold all across the country. In Robert’s words, “We reinvented ourselves.”

That’s what Americans have done for over two hundred years: reinvented ourselves. And to spur on more success stories like the Allen Brothers, we’ve begun to reinvent our energy policy. We’re not just handing out money. We’re issuing a challenge. We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo Projects of our time.

At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they’re using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.

Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all-– and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.

Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America’s success. But if we want to win the future-– if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas-– then we also have to win the race to educate our kids.

Think about it. Over the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to 9th in the proportion of young people with a college degree. And so the question is whether all of us-– as citizens, and as parents-– are willing to do what’s necessary to give every child a chance to succeed.

That responsibility begins not in our classrooms, but in our homes and communities. It’s family that first instills the love of learning in a child. Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done. We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair; that success is not a function of fame or PR, but of hard work and discipline.

Our schools share this responsibility. When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance. But too many schools don’t meet this test. That’s why instead of just pouring money into a system that’s not working, we launched a competition called Race to the Top. To all fifty states, we said, “If you show us the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement, we’ll show you the money.”

Race to the Top is the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation. For less than one percent of what we spend on education each year, it has led over 40 states to raise their standards for teaching and learning. These standards were developed, not by Washington, but by Republican and Democratic governors throughout the country. And Race to the Top should be the approach we follow this year as we replace No Child Left Behind with a law that is more flexible and focused on what’s best for our kids.

You see, we know what’s possible for our children when reform isn’t just a top-down mandate, but the work of local teachers and principals; school boards and communities.

Take a school like Bruce Randolph in Denver. Three years ago, it was rated one of the worst schools in Colorado; located on turf between two rival gangs. But last May, 97% of the seniors received their diploma. Most will be the first in their family to go to college. And after the first year of the school’s transformation, the principal who made it possible wiped away tears when a student said “Thank you, Mrs. Waters, for showing… that we are smart and we can make it.”

Let’s also remember that after parents, the biggest impact on a child’s success comes from the man or woman at the front of the classroom. In South Korea, teachers are known as “nation builders.” Here in America, it’s time we treated the people who educate our children with the same level of respect. We want to reward good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones. And over the next ten years, with so many Baby Boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.

In fact, to every young person listening tonight who’s contemplating their career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child-– become a teacher. Your country needs you.

Of course, the education race doesn’t end with a high school diploma. To compete, higher education must be within reach of every American. That’s why we’ve ended the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that went to banks, and used the savings to make college affordable for millions of students. And this year, I ask Congress to go further, and make permanent our tuition tax credit-– worth $10,000 for four years of college.

Because people need to be able to train for new jobs and careers in today’s fast-changing economy, we are also revitalizing America’s community colleges. Last month, I saw the promise of these schools at Forsyth Tech in North Carolina. Many of the students there used to work in the surrounding factories that have since left town. One mother of two, a woman named Kathy Proctor, had worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. And she told me she’s earning her degree in biotechnology now, at 55 years old, not just because the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to pursue their dreams too. As Kathy said, “I hope it tells them to never give up.”

If we take these steps-- if we raise expectations for every child, and give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day they’re born until the last job they take-– we will reach the goal I set two years ago: by the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

One last point about education. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet live every day with the threat of deportation. Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.

Now, I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration. I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows. I know that debate will be difficult and take time. But tonight, let’s agree to make that effort. And let’s stop expelling talented, responsible young people who can staff our research labs, start new businesses, and further enrich this nation.

The third step in winning the future is rebuilding America. To attract new businesses to our shores, we need the fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information-– from high-speed rail to high-speed internet.

Our infrastructure used to be the best – but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a “D.”

We have to do better. America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, and constructed the interstate highway system. The jobs created by these projects didn’t just come from laying down tracks or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town’s new train station or the new off-ramp.

Over the last two years, we have begun rebuilding for the 21st century, a project that has meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction industry. Tonight, I’m proposing that we redouble these efforts.

We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We will make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based on what’s best for the economy, not politicians.

Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying-– without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway.

Within the next five years, we will make it possible for business to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98% of all Americans. This isn’t just about a faster internet and fewer dropped calls. It’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age. It’s about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world. It’s about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor.

All these investments-– in innovation, education, and infrastructure-– will make America a better place to do business and create jobs. But to help our companies compete, we also have to knock down barriers that stand in the way of their success.

Over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change.

So tonight, I’m asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system. Get rid of the loopholes. Level the playing field. And use the savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years-– without adding to our deficit.

To help businesses sell more products abroad, we set a goal of doubling our exports by 2014-– because the more we export, the more jobs we create at home. Already, our exports are up. Recently, we signed agreements with India and China that will support more than 250,000 jobs in the United States. And last month, we finalized a trade agreement with South Korea that will support at least 70,000 American jobs.This agreement has unprecedented support from business and labor; Democrats and Republicans, and I ask this Congress to pass it as soon as possible.

Before I took office, I made it clear that we would enforce our trade agreements, and that I would only sign deals that keep faith with American workers, and promote American jobs. That’s what we did with Korea, and that’s what I intend to do as we pursue agreements with Panama and Colombia, and continue our Asia Pacific and global trade talks.

To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I’ve ordered a review of government regulations. When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them. But I will not hesitate to create or enforce commonsense safeguards to protect the American people. That’s what we’ve done in this country for more than a century. It’s why our food is safe to eat, our water is safe to drink, and our air is safe to breathe. It’s why we have speed limits and child labor laws. It’s why last year, we put in place consumer protections against hidden fees and penalties by credit card companies, and new rules to prevent another financial crisis. And it’s why we passed reform that finally prevents the health insurance industry from exploiting patients.

Now, I’ve heard rumors that a few of you have some concerns about the new health care law. So let me be the first to say that anything can be improved. If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you. We can start right now by correcting a flaw in the legislation that has placed an unnecessary bookkeeping burden on small businesses.

What I’m not willing to do is go back to the days when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condition. I’m not willing to tell James Howard, a brain cancer patient from Texas, that his treatment might not be covered. I’m not willing to tell Jim Houser, a small business owner from Oregon, that he has to go back to paying $5,000 more to cover his employees. As we speak, this law is making prescription drugs cheaper for seniors and giving uninsured students a chance to stay on their parents’ coverage. So instead of re-fighting the battles of the last two years, let’s fix what needs fixing and move forward.

Now, the final step-– a critical step-– in winning the future is to make sure we aren’t buried under a mountain of debt.

We are living with a legacy of deficit-spending that began almost a decade ago. And in the wake of the financial crisis, some of that was necessary to keep credit flowing, save jobs, and put money in people’s pockets.

But now that the worst of the recession is over, we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same.

So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.

This freeze will require painful cuts. Already, we have frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs. The Secretary of Defense has also agreed to cut tens of billions of dollars in spending that he and his generals believe our military can do without.

I recognize that some in this Chamber have already proposed deeper cuts, and I’m willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without. But let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens. And let’s make sure what we’re cutting is really excess weight. Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you’ll feel the impact.

Now, most of the cuts and savings I’ve proposed only address annual domestic spending, which represents a little more than 12% of our budget. To make further progress, we have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending alone will be enough. It won’t.

The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it-– in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes.

This means further reducing health care costs, including programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are the single biggest contributor to our long-term deficit. Health insurance reform will slow these rising costs, which is part of why nonpartisan economists have said that repealing the health care law would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to our deficit. Still, I’m willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs, including one that Republicans suggested last year: medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits.

To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.

And if we truly care about our deficit, we simply cannot afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. Before we take money away from our schools, or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break.

It’s not a matter of punishing their success. It’s about promoting America’s success.

In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify the individual tax code. This will be a tough job, but members of both parties have expressed interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them.

So now is the time to act. Now is the time for both sides and both houses of Congress-– Democrats and Republicans-– to forge a principled compromise that gets the job done. If we make the hard choices now to rein in our deficits, we can make the investments we need to win the future.

Let me take this one step further. We shouldn’t just give our people a government that’s more affordable. We should give them a government that’s more competent and efficient. We cannot win the future with a government of the past.

We live and do business in the information age, but the last major reorganization of the government happened in the age of black and white TV. There are twelve different agencies that deal with exports. There are at least five different entities that deal with housing policy. Then there’s my favorite example: the Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in when they’re in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.

Now, we have made great strides over the last two years in using technology and getting rid of waste. Veterans can now download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse. We’re selling acres of federal office space that hasn’t been used in years, and we will cut through red tape to get rid of more. But we need to think bigger. In the coming months, my administration will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate, and reorganize the federal government in a way that best serves the goal of a more competitive America. I will submit that proposal to Congress for a vote – and we will push to get it passed.

In the coming year, we will also work to rebuild people’s faith in the institution of government. Because you deserve to know exactly how and where your tax dollars are being spent, you will be able to go to a website and get that information for the very first time in history. Because you deserve to know when your elected officials are meeting with lobbyists, I ask Congress to do what the White House has already done: put that information online. And because the American people deserve to know that special interests aren’t larding up legislation with pet projects, both parties in Congress should know this: if a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it.

A 21st century government that’s open and competent. A government that lives within its means. An economy that’s driven by new skills and ideas. Our success in this new and changing world will require reform, responsibility, and innovation. It will also require us to approach that world with a new level of engagement in our foreign affairs.

Just as jobs and businesses can now race across borders, so can new threats and new challenges. No single wall separates East and West; no one rival superpower is aligned against us.

And so we must defeat determined enemies wherever they are, and build coalitions that cut across lines of region and race and religion. America’s moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom, justice, and dignity. And because we have begun this work, tonight we can say that American leadership has been renewed and America’s standing has been restored.

Look to Iraq, where nearly 100,000 of our brave men and women have left with their heads held high; where American combat patrols have ended; violence has come down; and a new government has been formed. This year, our civilians will forge a lasting partnership with the Iraqi people, while we finish the job of bringing our troops out of Iraq. America’s commitment has been kept; the Iraq War is coming to an end.

Of course, as we speak, al Qaeda and their affiliates continue to plan attacks against us. Thanks to our intelligence and law enforcement professionals, we are disrupting plots and securing our cities and skies. And as extremists try to inspire acts of violence within our borders, we are responding with the strength of our communities, with respect for the rule of law, and with the conviction that American Muslims are a part of our American family.

We have also taken the fight to al Qaeda and their allies abroad. In Afghanistan, our troops have taken Taliban strongholds and trained Afghan Security Forces. Our purpose is clear – by preventing the Taliban from reestablishing a stranglehold over the Afghan people, we will deny al Qaeda the safe-haven that served as a launching pad for 9/11.

Thanks to our heroic troops and civilians, fewer Afghans are under the control of the insurgency. There will be tough fighting ahead, and the Afghan government will need to deliver better governance. But we are strengthening the capacity of the Afghan people and building an enduring partnership with them. This year, we will work with nearly 50 countries to begin a transition to an Afghan lead. And this July, we will begin to bring our troops home.

In Pakistan, al Qaeda’s leadership is under more pressure than at any point since 2001. Their leaders and operatives are being removed from the battlefield. Their safe-havens are shrinking. And we have sent a message from the Afghan border to the Arabian Peninsula to all parts of the globe: we will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you.

American leadership can also be seen in the effort to secure the worst weapons of war. Because Republicans and Democrats approved the New START Treaty, far fewer nuclear weapons and launchers will be deployed. Because we rallied the world, nuclear materials are being locked down on every continent so they never fall into the hands of terrorists.

Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meet its obligations, the Iranian government now faces tougher and tighter sanctions than ever before. And on the Korean peninsula, we stand with our ally South Korea, and insist that North Korea keeps its commitment to abandon nuclear weapons.

This is just a part of how we are shaping a world that favors peace and prosperity. With our European allies, we revitalized NATO, and increased our cooperation on everything from counter-terrorism to missile defense. We have reset our relationship with Russia, strengthened Asian alliances, and built new partnerships with nations like India. This March, I will travel to Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador to forge new alliances for progress in the Americas. Around the globe, we are standing with those who take responsibility – helping farmers grow more food; supporting doctors who care for the sick; and combating the corruption that can rot a society and rob people of opportunity.

Recent events have shown us that what sets us apart must not just be our power – it must be the purpose behind it. In South Sudan-– with our assistance-– the people were finally able to vote for independence after years of war. Thousands lined up before dawn. People danced in the streets. One man who lost four of his brothers at war summed up the scene around him: “This was a battlefield for most of my life. Now we want to be free.”

We saw that same desire to be free in Tunisia, where the will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator. And tonight, let us be clear: the United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.

We must never forget that the things we’ve struggled for, and fought for, live in the hearts of people everywhere. And we must always remember that the Americans who have borne the greatest burden in this struggle are the men and women who serve our country.

Tonight, let us speak with one voice in reaffirming that our nation is united in support of our troops and their families. Let us serve them as well as they have served us-– by giving them the equipment they need; by providing them with the care and benefits they have earned; and by enlisting our veterans in the great task of building our own nation.

Our troops come from every corner of this country – they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.

We should have no illusions about the work ahead of us. Reforming our schools; changing the way we use energy; reducing our deficit-– none of this is easy. All of it will take time. And it will be harder because we will argue about everything. The cost. The details. The letter of every law.

Of course, some countries don’t have this problem. If the central government wants a railroad, they get a railroad – no matter how many homes are bulldozed. If they don’t want a bad story in the newspaper, it doesn’t get written.

And yet, as contentious and frustrating and messy as our democracy can sometimes be, I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth.

We may have differences in policy, but we all believe in the rights enshrined in our Constitution. We may have different opinions, but we believe in the same promise that says this is a place where you can make it if you try. We may have different backgrounds, but we believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything’s possible. No matter who you are. No matter where you come from.

That dream is why I can stand here before you tonight. That dream is why a working class kid from Scranton can stand behind me. That dream is why someone who began by sweeping the floors of his father’s Cincinnati bar can preside as Speaker of the House in the greatest nation on Earth.

That dream-– that American Dream-– is what drove the Allen Brothers to reinvent their roofing company for a new era. It’s what drove those students at Forsyth Tech to learn a new skill and work towards the future. And that dream is the story of a small business owner named Brandon Fisher.

Brandon started a company in Berlin, Pennsylvania that specializes in a new kind of drilling technology. One day last summer, he saw the news that halfway across the world, 33 men were trapped in a Chilean mine, and no one knew how to save them.

But Brandon thought his company could help. And so he designed a rescue that would come to be known as Plan B. His employees worked around the clock to manufacture the necessary drilling equipment. And Brandon left for Chile.

Along with others, he began drilling a 2,000 foot hole into the ground, working three or four days at a time with no sleep. Thirty-seven days later, Plan B succeeded, and the miners were rescued. But because he didn’t want all of the attention, Brandon wasn’t there when the miners emerged. He had already gone home, back to work on his next project.

Later, one of his employees said of the rescue, “We proved that Center Rock is a little company, but we do big things.”

We do big things.

From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream. That’s how we win the future.

We are a nation that says, “I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company. I might not come from a family of college graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree. I might not know those people in trouble, but I think I can help them, and I need to try. I’m not sure how we’ll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we’ll get there. I know we will.”

We do big things.

The idea of America endures. Our destiny remains our choice. And tonight, more than two centuries later, it is because of our people that our future is hopeful, our journey goes forward, and the state of our union is strong.

Thank you, God Bless You, and may God Bless the United States of America.

USA Network's superior crime shows really do live by that slogan "Characters Welcome"

"When Mary Met Marshall": In last week's episode of USA Network's In Plain Sight, we witnessed the less-than-magical first meeting in 2003 of present-day WITSEC colleagues Marshall Mann (Frederick Weller) and sarcastic, generally misanthropic Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack).

"This week sees the season premieres of USA's Law & Order: Criminal Intent (yesterday's debut, introducing a new detective played by Saffron Burrows, marked the beginning of season 9) and In Plain Sight (starting its third season today). Both series feature USA doing what it does best: offering quirky crimefighters who nail bad guys even as their own lives are falling apart."

-- Gary Susman, in a March 31 AOL "Inside TV" post,

"How USA Network Found Its Groove"

by Ken

Meanwhile, tonight Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio joins the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent as the Major Case Squad's new captain, as the show moves toward completion of a near-total cast turnover since the show migrated from NBC to USA Network last season. One of the perceptive points Gary Susman makes in the above-referenced post, written for the season premieres of L&O: CI (now Tuesday nights at 10pm ET) and In Plain Sight (now Wednesday nights at 10pm) is that even this fugitive from Dick Wolf's Law & Order plant, which seems not to fit the mold of the USA-created shows he's writing about, was nudged closer with the introduction of the quirky Jeff Goldblum as one of the male detectives -- not surprisingly, a quirky detective.

We're two episodes into those new seasons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent (Tuesdays at 10pm ET/PT) and In Plain Sight (Wednesdays at 10pm ET/PT) on USA Network, and they're both going swimmingly. In Plain Sight, created by David Maples, is coming off perhaps its most memorable episode, telling in parallel a troubled couple's 2003 entry into the witness-protection program and its present-day crisis, the point of fascination being that the first encounter between Mary and Marshall and their extremely uneasy first collaboration. It was, I think, everything we fans of these outstanding characters might have hoped for.

I've been wanting to write about the USA series, which now include Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and White Collar as well, but it's not easy to describe what's so good about them except that they're built around really memorable and audience-involving characters and that they're really well written and acted. And that seems so obvious as to be hardly worth saying.

Which may be why I have trouble letting go of Gary Susman's piece. He seems to think it's easy to explain the USA series. The network, he says, has a formula

The network's quirky crimefighter formula goes back to Monk, which debuted in 2002. (Actually, it goes back even further, to NBC's Columbo, in which Peter Falk's rumpled gumshoe could barely keep his trenchcoat clean or his jalopy running but managed nonetheless to trip up murderers with his disarming manner and his annoying attention to detail.) With Adrian Monk, played to Emmy-winning perfection by Tony Shalhoub, USA had a sleuth whose obsessive-compulsive disorder made him nearly impossible to get along with but also made him a brilliantly deductive detective. It also made him very funny. The juxtaposition of Monk's meticulous pursuit of criminals with his shambles of a private life made the show a pioneering comedy, one that satisfied mystery lovers while reassuring viewers that each week's menace was low-stakes enough that they didn't have to worry too much about the characters' fates. It was crime-caper comfort food, and it provided USA with a hit that gave the long-faceless network an identifiable brand. The series finale, in December 2009, drew 9.4 million viewers, setting a record as the most-watched episode of a scripted cable series.

The basic description of Monk, created by Andy Breckman, is terrific, including the hark-back to Peter Falk's justly celebrated Columbo. What's objectionable to the point of being nonsensical is the notion that there is any kind of "formula" at work here. You would think that an observer as canny as Susman shows himself would hear the alarm bells going off with the Columbo reference. If there were indeed a formula at work here, you would expect to have found Columbo not only widely but successfully imitated.

In fact, about the only instance that pops to mind is Murder, She Wrote and Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher. By astonishing coincidence, Murder, She Wrote was created by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link in collaboration with Peter S. Fischer, and the "formula" consisted of a memorable central character and audience-involving supporting ones, with many, many seasons' worth of solid casting and writing. (For extra credit, list the shows that have successfully copied the Murder, She Wrote "formula.")

The fact is that much of what Susman claims is part and parcel of the Monk "formula" isn't true of some or all of the other USA shows. I can see, for example, how Monk could be considered "crime-caper comfort food," which "satisfied mystery lovers while reassuring viewers that each week's menace was low-stakes enough that they didn't have to worry too much about the characters' fates." But first off, of what TV crime series is this not true? It's one of those facts of life of series TV. The regular cast members are safe unless one is being written out of the show, in which case there's apt to have been so much advance publicity that it still comes as not much of a surprise. And this is as true of, say, the dreadful CSI shows as of anything on USA.

(So why are so many people watching the CSI crapfests? Perhaps CBS has a vast network of field operatives paying people to watch, or at least claim to watch, them? Or perhaps, with those tiresome plots cloaked in all that technical mumbo-jumbo, they've found a hitherto untapped audience of folks whose only available entertainment alternative is staring at a blank wall?)

Surprisingly, although Susman takes ample note of the fact that Monk was a comedy, and a very funny one, it doesn't seem to occur to him to stress this as USA's "formula." The network has chosen to make its crime-caper series funny. It was one of the things that popped out of the pilot of Burn Notice, created by Matt Nix and starring Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westen, a CIA agent who has inexplicably been "burned" -- dismissed and abandoned in Miami. The show is hilarious, not least for Michael's brilliantly ingenious narration, and also for the remarkable supporting cast -- we'll talk more about this before the new season begins, in June.

The notion of "formula" says that these shows are something anyone could do, by simply popping interchangeable elements into the formulaic pattern. To me, this triumphantly misses the entire point of what the USA shows have done, which is to create memorable characters, which obviously means hiring really good actors, and writing well for them.

"USA's slogan was 'Characters Welcome,'" Susman writes, "but it soon became clear that all the new lead characters were going to be variations on Adrian Monk." I'm thinking that in his determination to "gotcha" USA, to ferret out hidden truths, he's overlooked the obvious. What USA does so well is to live by that slogan: "Characters Welcome." TV, after all, is basically a character-driven medium. The "Characters Welcome" thing is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do well, and a quite extraordinary thing when it's done well.

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